Indict, Convict, Send the Killer Cops to Jail!
The Whole Damn System Is Guilty as Hell!

Justice for Ezell Ford!
25-year-old Black man murdered by LAPD

June 8, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck just cleared the Los Angeles Police Department of the murder of Ezell Ford. The LAPD inspector general also found the murder of Ezell Ford justified. Like a punch to the gut, Justifiable Homicide is the ruling by the same organization (LAPD) that carried out the murder of Ezell Ford. The LA Police Commission will determine after a hearing Tuesday, June 9, whether the murder was within department policy. Cold-blooded murder is within LAPD department policy, so it’s highly likely they will also rule the shooting of Ezell Ford Justifiable Homicide.

Ezell Ford was a 25-year-old Black man murdered by the LAPD on August 11 in South Central, LA—just two days after the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. After withholding the autopsy report for four months, the LAPD released it late last year. The report shows that Ford, who was unarmed, was shot three times—in the side, in the arm, and in the back. The shot in the back showed a “muzzle imprint” from the gun fired. This means he was shot at a very close range. Ezell Ford had mental health problems and was known to people in the neighborhood. He was just a block from his home when he was attacked by police. The cops who killed Ford, Sharlton Wampler and Antonio Villegas, are from a notorious “anti-gang” unit in the area, a unit of the Newton Division of the LAPD. These pigs proudly call themselves “the Shootin’ Newton.” LAPD Chief Charlie Beck has repeatedly asked people to sit back and “let the system work” while the police investigate the shooting of Ezell Ford. This ruling is the system working, just like it has always worked. And the ruling lays the basis for future murderous police assaults on the masses.

It is reported in the media that “sources” say the LAPD and inspector general reports conclude that Ford and one of the officers, Sharlton Wampler, had scratches on their hands, and the holster for Wampler’s gun was scratched, and that tests found Ford’s DNA on the weapon. First off, why did these cops approach Ezell Ford in the first place? For what reason? The cops had no right whatsoever to approach and to attack him, as he was doing nothing wrong. “If there was no reason to stop him, then there was no reason to shoot him,” Tritobia Ford, Ezell’s mother, has said. For months, the LAPD has said Ford was assumed to have narcotics. But to this day the LAPD has never reported whether or not they found any narcotics, and they don’t say because there were no narcotics. With regard to the scratches on Ford and Wampler, the scratches on the holster of Wampler’s gun, and the finding of Ezell Ford’s DNA on the weapon that killed him, even if true, how these things happened is not known and are not a justification for killing Ford.

This ruling of Justifiable Homicide comes in a context. Police murder and mass incarceration are at genocidal proportions in LA and nationwide. Tens of thousands of people across the U.S. have protested, resisted, and risen in rebellion over the past several months to put a stop to it. The LAPD and the system they work for are “doubling down” in this context. With this ruling, the LAPD and the system are flashing a giant green light for cops to continue to murder innocent people, in Los Angeles and nationwide. This must be answered by the masses of people, powerfully.

The LAPD has killed more people this year than any other police department in the country (according to “The Counted,” a database compiled by the Guardian newspaper).¹ We’re told by the LAPD that these statistics aren’t that different from previous years. That’s right! The LAPD has murdered many people in the years leading up to this one, and they continue to murder people, like Brendon Glenn in Venice on May 5. Under the signboard of “investigation,” the LAPD is hiding the video that shows Brendon Glenn being gunned down by the LAPD. Another LAPD cover-up is brazenly and openly occurring right before our eyes! The LAPD does not want that video of Brendon Glenn’s murder released because it may trigger a response from the people, in a national context where murder by police, and resistance and rebellion to stop it, has taken center stage.

Ezell Ford was Black and unarmed, Brendon Glenn was Black and unarmed, “Brother Africa” (Charly Leundeu Keunang) on Skid Row, who the LAPD murdered in cold blood on March 1, was an African immigrant from Cameroon—Black and unarmed, and Omar Abrego, who was beaten to death by the LAPD Newton Division anti- gang unit just days before that same unit murdered Ezell Ford, was Latino and unarmed. These are some of the 26 people the LAPD has killed over the past year and one half, mainly Black and Latino.

Nobody with a beating heart should allow this outrage to go down without becoming part of an intensifying fight for Justice for Ezell Ford and all the Stolen Lives. We must refuse to live in a system that commits state-sanctioned murder on a mass and epidemic scale, and then exonerates itself for doing so. Long years, decades and centuries of oppression of Black people have come to this: Either this system continues to exist and this slow genocide of Black people continues and potentially becomes a fast genocide; or millions of people sweep away this system in a revolutionary struggle that changes the course of history and an entirely new system is put in its place, a socialist system on its way to communism. (See Revolution series “Two Constitutions, Two Different Systems, Two Different Futures for African-American People”: here, here, and here.) On Day One of the success of this revolution, these murders by police of Black, Latino, and all oppressed people STOP, right then and there. It’s a world historic challenge, and it’s possible. This SYSTEM cannot do away with MURDER BY POLICE. But REVOLUTION can do away with this SYSTEM.

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1. “The Counted” is a project by the Guardian—and the public—working to count the number of people killed by police and other law enforcement agencies in the United States throughout 2015, to monitor their demographics and to tell the stories of how they died.

 

 

 

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